Week 11: The unsaid argument

Redacted documents, unpriced externalities and the political speech that persuades by what it declines to mention

3 May 2027

A redacted government document is the most literal object in this course: black bars over specific words, the omission itself printed and handed to you. But the more interesting cases are the ones where nothing is visibly missing. An economic model that leaves a cost — carbon, care work, noise — out of its accounting isn’t hiding anything; it’s just declining to count it, and the model still balances. A political speech that never states its actual policy, only its opponent’s, persuades by omission while looking like a complete argument.

This week is the direct rehearsal for the final assessment: an argument whose force depends on what it refuses to say is a redaction with the black bars removed, structurally the same move as everything else in weeks 2 through 10, just with higher stakes for who gets to decide what counts as background.

Outline#

• redaction as the literal case: the omission you can see the shape of
• unpriced externalities: omission that doesn’t look like omission at all
• rehearsing the final assessment’s central move on real political and economic texts